Synopsis

The internationally acclaimed author of The House on Mango Street gives us a deeply moving tale of loss, grief, and healing: a lyrically told, richly illustrated fable for grown-ups about a woman’s search for a cat who goes missing in the wake of her mother’s death.

The word “orphan” might not seem to apply to a fifty-three-year-old woman. Yet this is exactly how Sandra feels as she finds herself motherless, alone like “a glove left behind at the bus station.” What just might save her is her search for someone else gone missing: Marie, the black-and-white cat of her friend, Roz, who ran off the day they arrived from Tacoma. As Sandra and Roz scour the streets of San Antonio, posting flyers and asking everywhere, “Have you seen Marie?” the pursuit of this one small creature takes on unexpected urgency and meaning. With full-color illustrations that bring this transformative quest to vivid life, Have You Seen Marie? showcases a beloved author’s storytelling magic, in a tale that reminds us how love, even when it goes astray, does not stay lost forever.

Sandra Cisneros

About Sandra Cisneros

Sandra Cisneros was born in Chicago in 1954. Internationally acclaimed for her poetry and fiction, she has been the recipient of numerous awards, including the Lannan Literary Award and the American Book Award, and of fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the MacArthur Foundation. Cisneros is the author of two novels The House on Mango Street and Caramelo; a collection of short stories, Woman Hollering Creek; two books of poetry, My Wicked Ways and Loose Woman; and a children's book, Hairs/Pelitos. She is the founder of the Macondo Foundation, an association of writers united to serve underserved communities (www.macondofoundation.org), and is Writer in Residence at Our Lady of the Lake University, San Antonio. She lives in San Antonio, Texas. Find her online at www.sandracisneros.com.

Praise

Praise

“A real-life bedtime story for grownups.” —The Seattle Times

“Cisneros captures the experience of grief with moving and visceral clarity. . . . Like the best bedtime stories, [Have You Seen Marie?] both honors the darkness around us and keeps the same darkness at bay." —San Francisco Chronicle

“[A] magical journey . . . . Cisneros has folded powerful themes into this seemingly simple fable: onfronting and accepting the loss of a loved one, the importance of community, the presence of spirituality in our lives and the way that imagination and art can illuminate reality . . . . [Characters] come to life not only in Cisneros’ poetic nuggets of prose, but in Ester Hernández’s sweetly realistic color illustrations . . . . The book glows.” —The Miami Herald “The narrative becomes a springboard for a moving exploration of loss.” —San Antonio Express-News “Unique and uplifting . . . . Have You Seen Marie? does what every good picture book does by creating meaning through experience while being fun to read aloud . . . . Cisneros and Hernández invite the reader to visually enjoy the story, to listen to the music of the words, and have an experience without getting bogged down in self- help monotony.” —El Paso Times “[Have You Seen Marie?] is at its heart a parable for adults, whose themes of death, mourning and loss take on new meaning when presented within a simple tale about a cat gone astray . . . . Full of picturesque illustrations of San Antonio and its colorful characters.” —NBC Latino

“Cisneros’s gift of storytelling and Ester Hernández’s illustrations bring to life the story about death, grief, and the desire to move forward. This book is a wonderful gift to share with someone who is experiencing the pain of losing a loved one.” —Modern Latina

About the Book

The questions, discussion topics, and reading list that follow are intended to enhance your all-ages reading group’s discussion of Have You Seen Marie?, Sandra Cisneros’s simple, magical story of love, loss, and recovery.

FAMILY ACTIVITIES

— Read the book aloud with your family and show the pictures to younger members of the family who are not yet able to read.

— Gather mementos that remind you of your lost loved one and create a memory box or altar together. Display it in a prominent place in your home.

About the Guide

“Best-selling Cisneros chronicles a search for a runaway cat that turns into a way to work through grief and discover community. . . . The deliberately informal, rough-edged illustrations give a nice sense of Cisneros’ multicultural, bohemian neighborhood . . . [T]his warmhearted tale offers comfort to anyone coping with the loss of a loved one.” —Kirkus Reviews

The internationally acclaimed author of The House on Mango Street gives us a deeply moving tale of loss, grief, and solace: a lyrically told, richly illustrated fable for all ages about a woman’s search for a cat who goes missing in the wake of her mother’s death. For families dealing with their own grief, it offers a way to begin an open discussion with all members that can lead to healing.

The word “orphan” might not seem to apply to a fifty-three-year-old woman. Yet this is exactly how Sandra feels as she finds herself motherless, alone like “a glove left behind at the bus station.” What just might save her is her search for someone else gone missing: Marie, the black-and-white cat of her friend, Roz, who ran off the day they arrived from Tacoma. As Sandra and Roz scour the streets of San Antonio, posting flyers and asking everywhere, “Have you seen Marie?” the pursuit of this one small creature takes on unexpected urgency and meaning. With full-color illustrations that bring this transformative quest to vivid life, Have You Seen Marie? showcases a beloved author’s storytelling magic, in a tale that reminds us how love, even when it goes astray, does not stay lost forever.

About the Author

ABOUT THE AUTHOR Sandra Cisneros is the author of two highly celebrated novels, The House on Mango Street and Caramelo. Her awards include National Endowment of the Arts Fellowships, the Lannan Literary Award, the American Book Award, and a MacArthur Fellowship. Other books include the story collection Woman Hollering Creek; two books of poetry; and two books of children's literature. Her work has been translated into more than twenty languages. Cisneros is the founder of the Alfredo Cisneros Del Moral and Macondo Foundations, which serve creative writers. www.sandracisneros.com

ABOUT THE ILLUSTRATOR Ester Hernández is an internationally acclaimed visual artist whose work is in the permanent collections of the Smithsonian American Art Museum, the Library of Congress, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and the Museo Casa Estudio Diego Rivera y Frida Kahlo in Mexico City. She lives in San Francisco. www.esterhernandez.com

Discussion Guides

1. The epigraph is from a poem by Elena Poniatowska: “It’s then I ask you, mama, my mother, my heart, my mother,/my heart, my mother, mama, the sadness I feel. Where do I put it?/Where, mama?” What does this tell us about the story to come?

2. “Every day I woke up and felt like a glove left behind at the bus station,” the narrator says at the beginning of the book. What emotion is she expressing? Have you ever felt that way?

3. Ester Hernández, the illustrator, lost her own mother just before Cisneros approached her to collaborate on the book. Do you think it helped her in her grieving to create this art?

4. How do the illustrations reflect the emotions of the narrator and her friend and show us what they are feeling?

5. In addition to the narrator’s loss of her mother and her friend’s loss of Marie, several other characters in the book have experienced loss. Does it help them to know that others have suffered, too?

6. On page 42, the women encounter a neighbor who is sitting on her porch, knitting. It reminds the narrator of her mother, who “used to knit ugly scarves no one wanted to wear.” Have you ever had a memory triggered by something like that? Why do you think our memories work that way?

7. Throughout the book, people promise to help in some way, but usually forget or become distracted. Why do people make promises they don’t keep? What do you do when someone disappoints you like that?

8. The narrator says she feels like an orphan, though normally we think of orphans as children. In what ways is she an orphan? How would you try to help her feel better?

9. How does searching for Marie help her cope with her loss?

10. Towards the end of the story, the river, the wind, the trees, and the moon all speak to the narrator. How does this help her?

11. The Afterword opens: “In Mexico they say that when someone you love dies, a part of you dies with them. But they forget to mention that a part of them is born in you—not immediately, I’ve learned, but eventually, and gradually.” Does this idea help you to feel better in thinking about people you’ve lost?

12. Later in the Afterword, Cisneros writes, “I wish somebody had told me that love does not die, that we can continue to receive and give love after death.” Do you agree with her? Who has given you love, and to whom have you given it?

13. Cisneros also explains in the Afterword that “There is no getting over death, only learning to travel alongside it.” What does this say about why she wrote this book and how we remember loved ones we have lost?

Suggested Readings

The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros; On Death and Dying by Elisabeth Kubler-Ross; Tear Soup by Pat Schwiebert and Chuck DeKlyen; The Fall of Freddie the Leaf by Leo Buscaglia; Chicken Soup for the Teenage Soul by Jack Canfield, Mark Victor Hansen, and Kimberly Kirberger; Before We Were Free by Julia Alvarez; Who’s Got Game by Toni Morrison & Slade Morrison; Shel Silverstein, The Giving Tree; Aesop’s Fables; Blueback by Tim Winton; Rikki-Tikki-Tavi by Rudyard Kipling; Incantation by Alice Hoffman; Learning to Say Goodbye by Eda LeShan; Grief Observed by C.S Lewis; The Yearling by Marjorie Kinan Rawlings.

Have You Seen Marie? by Sandra Cisneros; Illustrated by Ester Hernandez